Tim Weisberg: If this is Ray's Green goodbye, it's been a great run

With two games left to go in the regular season, it's all about rest for the Boston Celtics. Head coach Doc Rivers has shown he favors rest over home-court advantage, sitting his four All-Stars as the 66-game schedule comes to a close and the playoffs loom.

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Posted Apr. 22, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Posted Apr. 22, 2012 at 12:01 AM

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With two games left to go in the regular season, it's all about rest for the Boston Celtics. Head coach Doc Rivers has shown he favors rest over home-court advantage, sitting his four All-Stars as the 66-game schedule comes to a close and the playoffs loom.

We're pretty sure this is the final run for a while for the Boston Celtics, who just won an Atlantic Division crown that was no sure thing a couple of months ago. We know they won't be the same team next year, and we think that they can at least make a valiant effort in the postseason.

But this past week, we found out that the rebuilding process almost started earlier than expected, so maybe we should just look at however further the Celtics advance as nothing but gravy.

Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski reported this week that the Celtics were close to dealing Ray Allen to the Memphis Grizzlies for O.J. Mayo and a draft pick at the deadline, and were further away, but still discussing, a trade with the Nets that would have sent Paul Pierce to New Jersey for a lottery pick and the expiring contract of Mehmet Okur.

Now, it's one thing that Danny Ainge and the Celtics were thinking about trading away Pierce and Allen, but to make matters worse, the team (it was reported by Wojo as Rivers making the call, but Rivers refuted that and said it was Ainge) called Allen to inform of the trade — only to call him 20 minutes later and tell him it was off.

Is that how you treat a guy like Ray?

It's the second time the Celtics have tried to trade Allen at the trade deadline, after he took less money to stay in Boston in 2010.

He could have made more than $10 million a year on another team, or made even less to sign with another contending team. But he chose to remain in Boston at a pretty good price and continued to perform at a high level, which made him an intriguing trade option last year when the Celts were looking to add younger talent. And this season, he became the Expiring Contact of Ray Allen, which meant he was even more likely to be shipped out of town.

The Boston Herald's Steve Bulpett has written this week about how the Wojnarowski report might be a bit overblown; team sources have told him that the asking price was a lot higher than just Mayo and a pick, and that things never really got as close as Wojo reported.

Allen is far too much of a professional to let all this have an effect on his game, but he's also an intelligent, thoughtful man who has to be feeling some amount of letdown from the team he's given his all to for five seasons now. In a fantastic piece by the Herald's Mark Murphy, Allen said his future may be elsewhere—especially if Boston isn't willing to commit to more than just a one-year deal this summer.

"I don't want to go into this season, like I have in past seasons, worrying about whether I was going to be traded or not. At this point we (his family) want to ride it out, take this thing to the house, and not have the instability of not knowing whether today or tomorrow something is going to happen," Allen said in the piece. "Wherever I end up after this summer, that has to be the No. 1 mandate. At this time I owe it to my family to be ultimately selfish, because I've been a very unselfish team player, and I'll always do that. But when it comes to myself and my family, I have to make sure that I don't rock their worlds or put them off-kilter in any fashion."

Allen has already accepted a bench role late this season, and unless the Celtics land a big-time free agent at the two-guard spot this summer, Avery Bradley is probably in line to remain the starter in the future. So even if Allen could get a multi-year deal from Boston, he'd have to swallow his pride and fill a Sixth Man role.

Many die-hard Celtics fans have gone along with the assumption that after one more run this season, the Celtics would pursue some top-flight talent with all the cap space they'll have this summer, and that Allen and Kevin Garnett would gladly sign for less money to stay in Boston and help foster the next generation into contention for a championship. After all, that's what championship Celtics traditionally do, and it's how they established a dynasty in the middle of the 20th century.

But now, it's starting to look like the possibility is very real that Allen and Garnett — who are now destined to forever be linked with the Celtics no matter what happens — could very well be wearing another team's laundry next season and coming to the Garden as the enemy. Even Pierce, a career-long Celtic and the team's captain, could still be dealt away in the off-season.

Which makes it even more imperative that fans enjoy this last ride while they can; the road may be bumpier up ahead, and it may even take a detour off the championship path for a while.

But for at least the next few weeks, it's straight ahead into the playoffs and potential glory. Just hope there isn't a "Dead End" sign popping up anywhere along that route.

Tim Weisberg covers the Boston Celtics for The Standard-Times. Contact him at timweisberg@hotmail.com.